Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 42 minutes ago
(Edwin Griffin) After a number of my Year 10 students entered a capture the flag cybersecurity competition they had a sudden burst of enthusiasm for the topic. Networking and cybersecurity, being parts of the national curriculum, are things that I should probably be teaching anyway so when it came to delivering this unit I figured I'd capture their enthusiasm by running my assessment as a capture the flag. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but as it turns out CTFs take quite a bit of effort - and getting a system like the micro:bit to reliably imitate a network a bit of work. Also creating a scenario where students don't just troll each other in the middle of an exam when... also figuring out how to stop them cheating when their communication is open... also figuring out a way to teach them everything they needed to know in order to even approach the task... also how do I learn all this stuff first?
Join me as I go through the five weeks I spent learning, delivering and then assessing cybersecurity things.
I'll be overviewing what I had to teach to get them ready, what I had to code on the micro:bits to make any of this work, and ultimately ask: how effective is it to run a capture the flag using Micro:bits.
pretalx.com/pycon-au-2025/talk/H7SEQT
python, pycon, australia, programming, conference, technical, developers, panel, sessions, libraries, frameworks, community, sysadmins, students, education, data, science
Videos licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
PyCon AU is the national conference for the Python programming community, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast developers, sysadmins and operations folk, students, educators, scientists, statisticians, and many others besides, all with a love for working with Python.
Licensed as CC BY-NC-SA - creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Produced by Next Day Video Australia: https://nextdayvideo.com.au
Fri Sep 12 11:40:00 2025 at Ballroom 3
(Edwin Griffin) After a number of my Year 10 students entered a capture the flag cybersecurity competition they had a sudden burst of enthusiasm for the topic. Networking and cybersecurity, being parts of the national curriculum, are things that I should probably be teaching anyway so when it came to delivering this unit I figured I'd capture their enthusiasm by running my assessment as a capture the flag. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but as it turns out CTFs take quite a bit of effort - and getting a system like the micro:bit to reliably imitate a network a bit of work. Also creating a scenario where students don't just troll each other in the middle of an exam when... also figuring out how to stop them cheating when their communication is open... also figuring out a way to teach them everything they needed to know in order to even approach the task... also how do I learn all this stuff first?
Join me as I go through the five weeks I spent learning, delivering and then assessing cybersecurity things.
I'll be overviewing what I had to teach to get them ready, what I had to code on the micro:bits to make any of this work, and ultimately ask: how effective is it to run a capture the flag using Micro:bits.
pretalx.com/pycon-au-2025/talk/H7SEQT
python, pycon, australia, programming, conference, technical, developers, panel, sessions, libraries, frameworks, community, sysadmins, students, education, data, science
Videos licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
PyCon AU is the national conference for the Python programming community, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast developers, sysadmins and operations folk, students, educators, scientists, statisticians, and many others besides, all with a love for working with Python.
Licensed as CC BY-NC-SA - creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Produced by Next Day Video Australia: https://nextdayvideo.com.au
Fri Sep 12 11:40:00 2025 at Ballroom 3
